The body which organises the Oscars is considering "radical" changes to the rules surrounding the coveted prize for best foreign language film to help more acclaimed examples of world cinema make it through to the nominations stage.

As the longlist for next year's Oscar is announced, revealing that 76 films from as many countries will compete for the award, officials told Deadline that alterations might be needed in future to improve the quality of movies. For example, this year's list does not include the Palme D'Or-winning French film Blue is the Warmest Colour, which was disqualified because it was not released in French cinemas by the October 1 2012 deadline. Indian hit The Lunchbox also misses out, despite being tipped by many as a potential prize winner, as the organisation which picks the country's contender chose The Good Road instead. Likewise, Japan chose the ungarlanded The Great Passage instead of Hirokazu Kore-eda's Cannes prize-winner Like Father, Like Son.

The absences flag up the problem with allowing individual committees to pick their countries' contender for the prize, and then naming only one film per country. High profile films such as Brazil's City of God and Romania's 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days have also missed out in the past. Pedro Almodovar's Talk to Her, which went on to win the 2002 Oscar for best original screenplay, was ignored by the Spanish committee that year in favour of Fernando León de Aranoa's Goya-winning Mondays in the Sun.

"I think it's time," foreign language Oscar committee chairman Mark Johnson told Deadline. "Different people over the years have said various things: 'What about a couple of wild cards? Or what about picking festival winners that for some reason weren't submitted?', but we're going to radically look at that."

However, Johnson cautioned against over-zealous meddling with the rules, hinting that helping countries to improve the quality of their selection committees might be the way forward. "All we can do is evaluate whether or not the submitting committee is a good representation of the film-making community [in that country]," he said. "I always use the example of the Spanish Academy of being the ideal because it is an Academy very much like ours. They submit, we don't always agree with it but that's not our call, it's theirs. And then we know that some committees are much more political."